Evolutionarily Superior

This just in: Squirrels lack opposable thumbs for typing and they don’t have enough brain capacity to get into a top university. That being said, I’m sure that squirrels can make enough questionably funny jokes in 12 weeks to last a lifetime. Let me introduce myself—I am The Gothic Squirrel.

So I’m sure a few are wondering, why choose a squirrel? Well, thanks to some bright-minded sophomore, a Facebook group entitled “Duke Squirrels” kept popping up in my newsfeed over winter break; a minor tweak and my persona was born. Additionally, I’ve always felt it necessary to view situations from a third party’s perspective in order to fully understand situations—what better campus figure than a squirrel can serve as my vehicle for discourse?

Before I perpetuate the super sappy senior column tour that will be gracing the backpages, I would like to relegate a bit more of this closure to thank yous. For starters, I’d like to thank my editor for taking away 90 percent of the parenthetical statements that were originally in the column (like this one). I’d like to thank all of the people who openly hated on “The Gothic Squirrel” in front of me as their special way of telling me they read my column. I’d like to thank the brothers of the amazing Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity for unknowingly giving me ideas for over half of my columns. I’d like to thank Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia for providing limitless access to squirrel knowledge. Lastly, I’d like to thank the one online commenter who read the column and disliked it every single week; let’s just say insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over (like reading this column) and expecting different results. If you agree with him and felt this column didn’t meet your humor standards, you can either lower your standards or read Kanye’s tweets. Now, onto the senior retrospection!

Sitting in the Duke University Union office last year, right after I was elected Freewater Presentations chair, I was told by one of the graduating DUU members how much he appreciated his last two years of college. He had finally found his niche, but he lamented the lateness of this realization. Unsurprisingly, I have similar sentiments now. This is why many of my columns constituted a homeless man’s self-help guide to finding your niche early in your Duke career.

A friend who is a cardiothoracic surgeon once said, “If I knew what it took to get here before I got here, there’s no [procreating] way that I would done this.” Be it running a DUU committee, being in a frat or writing a senior thesis, this year has presented me with more challenges and time suckers than ever expected. Sure, I thought I’d sit in the lab, pipette some liquids, call a few peeps up and order some flicks, but I quickly found that was about as easy as writing a pun-free column. This situation prevented me from drinking every night from Thursday to Monday (my hepatocytes thank me), but I am 100 percent sure that every idiotic decision I made that added to my stress will be well worth it. Didn’t I say myself that college is about doing it the wrong way so you’re not a doofus in the real world? Or is it about asking rhetorical questions to my readers?

Which leads me to a not-so-well-known fact—almost every behavior or viewpoint I satirized this year, I did agree with at some point in my Duke career. Yes, at one point I thought BSAI was racist. I used to hate Valentine’s Day. (For the record, now I actually like it.) I used to think service learning was stupid until I actually took the first of my five S.L. courses. I used to hate greek rush... but my viewpoint on that hasn’t changed. We Monday, Monday columnists always uphold our beliefs in spite of public opinion (at varying levels of humor).

My one final piece of advice, which will be applying force to a non-living equine: If a senior says something, you might want to listen. We are special because we’ve probably gone through everything you will, except for not having cable, but we’re not so far removed that we can’t still relate. Experience always rules—I’ll guarantee you’ll never enjoy a Scorsese deleted scene; it got cut for a reason.

So through Gothic Squirrel, Einsteinman’s Theories, or simply having a conversation with me, I hope that I have made every one of your Duke careers a little more... interesting. Love my writing or hate my writing, we all love Duke. We’re here to learn a little bit more from those around us—professors, blacks, females, greeks or squirrels. Hopefully I’ve fulfilled the “nerdy Jew” Area of Knowledge and “sarcasm” Mode of Inquiry graduation requirements for each and every one of you.